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Culture Wars: When ‘Consent’ means Rape

Adultery just made an appearance in the NYT Ethicist Column:

  1. The reader claims although he and his wife love each other, she’s been very ill and has said he can have affairs.
  2. He’s agonising over whether to be honest about his situation with future sexual partners.
  3. He disclosed his circumstances on a dating site and ended up being called an adulterer and a ‘dirty old man’.

Here is the Ethicist’s reply:

Marital vows should not, in ordinary circumstances, be subject to renegotiation. But you have taken your wife’s declaration to mark a departure from ordinary circumstances. What now? Sex requires the consent of all parties involved, and real consent rules out substantial misrepresentation. So you’ll have to find a partner who’s O.K. with your situation. This, as you’ve discovered, may be difficult, given the attitudes of the women on your dating site, most of whom will want at least the prospect of a romantic relationship. (You refer to having your wife’s permission; some of your respondents may have wondered whether she really felt she had a choice. But presumably you’ve decided that her consent was in fact full-hearted and freely given.)

So what is Consent anyway?

This bit:

 Sex requires the consent of all parties involved, and real consent rules out substantial misrepresentation.

Ok, so this is interesting. We’re now talking about full consent and partial consent. Where partial consent would be based on incomplete or unreliable information.

a.k.a. Alternative Facts / Unknown Unknowns.

How many of Weinstein, Spacey or Savile’s alleged victims could be argued to have consented?

On the grounds they were free to reject their alleged assailant’s advances?

It wouldn’t require a particularly skilled lawyer to make such an argument.

Not if the courts put the onus on victims to prove, without evidence, that they refused to consent.

Culture War

November 2017 marks the 500th anniversary of Martin Luther kickstarting the Reformation by nailing his demands to a Wittenberg church door.

Sexual Reformation

The smart people at the Spectator recently found a way to combine the Westminster fallout from the Weinstein Sexual harassment scandal with the anniversary of Luther’s Reformation.

They likened the media frenzy about sexual abuse in Westminster to a witch hunt and painted it as positively Puritan.

Even the Conservative Woman decided to get in on the act and attack the left’s feminism for depriving men of sex.

Yes that’s right – The Conservative Woman!

So what would a real Puritan have to say about all this?

Peter Hitchens attacks the Jihadi Left.

When Rape becomes Consent

Under certain circumstances actual rape, as above, is reclassified as consent.

What about the other way around?

In the British Spycops case several law-abiding UK campaigners ‘consented’ to sex with undercover police who had infiltrated their activist groups by using false identities and lying about the state-funded nature of their motives.

In one case a policeman fathered a child with an activist — before going missing.

One victim has referred to this as Institutional Rape.

Given the seriousness of these crimes and the fact that they were carried out by law enforcement officers following orders, it is staggering that there hasn’t been a full Inquiry launched so as to ensure complete transparency about this chapter of our history and to be able to learn lessons and move on.

Instead we face more cover-ups as our cowardly leaders close ranks once again and teach us that they literally rape with impunity.

 Sex requires the consent of all parties involved, and real consent rules out substantial misrepresentation.

PM Theresa May and current Home Secretary Amber Rudd will both be fully aware of these cases.

But there’s a culture war being played out.

Both have presided over failed Child Sexual Abuse Inquiries again involving Westminster Paedophiles.

The stakes are high and until May or Rudd chooses to end the culture of abuse, the reign of terror will have no end.